'Fox Mole' Joe Muto Lands Book Deal: Money For Nothing?

The year 2012 has been a big one for books, and it's about to get bigger.
Reuters

Joe Muto, the former Fox News employee who sought to publicly scorn his then-employer under the short-lived guise of online anonymity, has landed the inevitable book deal.

*Sigh.*

An Atheist in the Foxhole will be published by Penguin Group imprint Dutton and is scheduled for release in early 2013.

The book describes how Muto, an NPR-listening, Obama-loving liberal, took a job at Fox News expecting he'd only stay for a few months, according to a publisher statement. But eight years later he was still there, working as a producer for Bill O'Reilly, a man with 'fair and balanced' views that made Muto cringe on a daily basis.

Fed up with the conservative culture at Fox News, Muto sold Gawker on what he felt was embarassing behind-the-scenes information about his employer. And so the Fox Mole was born.

Among Muto's so-called big reveals was rough footage of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney talking about his and his wife's love of horseback riding -- hardly a front-page scandal. Adding insult to injury, it barely took Fox News a day to identify the mole. He didn't make much of an attempt to cover his tracks.

In the end, it was the digital trail that gave me away, Muto wrote in a Gawker post shortly after the fallout. They knew that someone, using my computer login, had accessed the sources for two videos that ended up on Gawker over the past few weeks. They couldn't prove it entirely, but I was pretty much the only suspect.

Just the day before, Muto, then still under anonymity, addressed the question of why he could not simply quit his job: 'So why not just leave Fox News?' you might ask. Good question! I've asked myself that same thing many times. And I am leaving. Sooner rather than later, I'm guessing. But I can't just leave quietly, can I? Where's the fun in that? So I'm John McClane-ing this shit. I'm inside the building, crawling through the air vents, gathering intel, and passing it along to Carl Winslow.

Muto later told CNN's Howard Kurtz that he was completely blackballed within the cable news industry. He alleged that his job search was hindered by potential employers who saw Fox News as a resume blunder.

He denied that his ultimate goal was to secure a book deal.

That was not the plan from the beginning, he told Kurtz.

Well, it's the plan now. But whether Muto really has anything to say remains to be seen.